So my little brother use to collect those skylanders. I have a feeling that these things will become as abusable as DLC. Game devs could just cut content from the game and instead of unlocking levels/items/characters through gameplay, they could just be like "We had to rush this product, the content we announced at E3 will be released in a few months. Please buy our DLC/AIIMBO to unlock this content."
yeah but skylanders does that mostly because that's their selling point
the amiibos so far are personal fighters for smash, dlc costumes for mario kart 8 (character themed outfit), weapons for hyrule warriors, etc
basically the amiibos are little figures that are dlc for multiple games other then for a single game, whereas skylanders have always been "buy more characters = get more gameplay and areas"